The Synthesis Series
by Dragonsdaughter
Summary: How the synthesis ending could have gone. Features 'No Perfect Fix, But It'll Do' and 'Vis Insita'.
1. No Perfect Fix, But It'll Do

**No Perfect Solution, But It'll Do**

They were stuck on that damn planet for three months.

From what Dr. Chakwas was able to tell, synthesis was a –a game changer, at the very least. A miracle, possibly, but it only went so far and didn't change the most basic facts of life –such as levo/dextro incompatibility and the fact that the Normandy was stuck on a levo planet with only four months of dextro rations.

In the end, they limped into the Sol system with twelve units of fuel to spare. Mercifully, they were met by mobile refueling stations and emergency crews with crates of rations and medical supplies.

Garrus never thought he'd see the day when a tube of _nutripaste_ would taste better than the best steak he'd ever had, but even that paled with the most important gift he received that day.

"_Commander Shepard is alive_." Joker replayed the transmission over the loudspeaker for the entire crew to hear. "_I repeat, the Commander was recovered from the Citadel and is recuperating in Vancouver_."

Up until that moment, Garrus had felt like his body was sheathed in diamond-hard ice that kept him upright and working, but nothing more than that. The news broke over him like a wave and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Arms wrapped around him (whose he couldn't really say, but he could hear Vega swearing in some language that the translators wouldn't even touch and Liara ordering someone to grab a chair), but the only thing he could really focus on was the sound of Joker calmly plotting their course to Earth outloud.

Afterwards Liara shut him up in the main battery with the guns that no one needed anymore and probably fourteen different spy cameras to monitor him. That was fine. It was good. He needed the quiet. To plan out what he'd say, how he'd approach her, … how he was going to _break her goddamn legs for leaving him behind_.

He spent the next two days vacillating between frustrated panic and irrational anger, but both abandoned him when his shuttle set down in front of the makeshift hospital sitting in the middle of a ruined city. He was met by a harried orderly who tried to run him off until the nearest Turian guard snarled at him to show some respect to goddamn _Garrus Vakarian_. The orderly was more helpful after that.

Shepard was being kept in the most secure section of the hospital: an honest-to-god bunker, with an honest-to-god round-the-clock squad of bodyguards.

Admiral Hackett escorted him inside, droning on about what-the-hell-ever, but all Garrus could see was the clean zone in the center of the bunker surrounded by beeping machines.

"She's awake most of the time, but not mobile." Hackett told him, as they drew near. "Her vitals are strong and she sleeps a lot. Her implants seem to be… repairing themselves, much like what's been going on for most everyone else who was exposed to the Crucible's detonation. However, it's been going much more slowly for her. There's not been much that we've been able to do except keep her comfortable and hydrated while this synthesis takes its course."

It was really no surprise to find Miranda in control of Shepard's recuperation and about as warm and welcoming as a Varren with one pup.

She'd finally ditched her skintight white catsuit for a pair of researcher's scrubs and looked surprisingly good in them, less like she was shoving her gender in the Galaxy's face and more like she more important things to do. "You have five minutes." She promised him in a voice like death. "If her stats even wobble, I'm throwing you out and you can wait in the yard with that damn dog."

"What dog?" Garrus looked wildly at Hackett, having missed the reference all together.

Hackett grimaced. "There's this _varren_…" He explained. "Urdnot Wrex dropped it off and it's been making Operative Lawson's life miserable. It waits outside and if no one checks on it, it _howls_. We can't figure out what it wants."

"You mean Urz?"

"… it has a _name_?" Miranda sounded like she'd bitten into something rotten. "Well, it's your problem now, Vakarian. Your five minutes have begun."

Her eyes were shut as he approached. She lay on a makeshift cot with a pale green surgical sheet tented over the majority of her body. Only her head and bare shoulders were left uncovered. Green light played gently over the portions of her skin that were visible as the energies of the Crucible worked to repair the damage done to her body. It said something about the level of damage that the light was still there. It had clung everyone in the Galaxy (near as Garrus could figure) for hours after the detonation, but Joker had been sheathed in the light for weeks.

At first they'd thought that it was a side effect of his being in the comparatively less shielded cockpit. It wasn't until Dr. Chakwas was able to repair her diagnostic equipment that anyone realized that the light was _changing_ them. By the time the lights faded for good, Joker's bones were not only healed… but _solid_. For the first time in his life, he was able to walk without pain although the limp was being stubborn about fading.

Moreover news was trickling in from around the galaxy; disease had stopped in its tracks. Drell who had been in immediate danger of dying from Kepral's syndrome were suddenly breathing without assistance. Oddly though, Quarians found they still required their suits. Allergies were untouched, but almost every species found itself with regenerative abilities that rivaled those of the Krogan or Vorcha.

Garrus stood paralyzed by her bedside, unable to make himself disturb her rest. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her sleeping peacefully –if ever. However, the choice was made for him as her eyes fluttered open and she turned her luminescent green gaze towards him.

"Hey." She croaked in the most awful voice a person could possibly imagine. "…'bout time you caught up."

Something broke loose in Garrus's chest and rippled up his throat like broken glass in reverse. Surprisingly, it was a laugh. "Well, Joker had to challenge the blast wave to a race and ended up crash landing us on this planet in the middle of nowhere. Took us a while to make it home."

Shepard's shoulder twitched and he realized she was trying to reach for him, but couldn't make her arms work. Instead, he gently smoothed her sweat-damp hair out of her face. "There, there." He crooned. "It's going to be all right."

Her mouth quirked. "Garrus…" She coughed (a suspiciously damp sound) and then exhaled gustily. "They won't give me a mirror. How bad is it?"

Garrus leaned back and made a show of critically surveying her face. Frankly, she was a worse mess than she had been even fresh off a Cerberus operating table. This time, the major difference was that the cracks in her cheeks were glowing green instead of orange and –while they appeared to be closing- there were already scars.

He leaned in close and pressed his forehead against hers. At that distance he could hear the labored sound of her breathing and the faint hum or her implants as they repaired themselves. If he held still, he fancied that he could hear the steady beat of her heart. Finally he let out the breath that he felt like he'd been holding since the second she charged into Harbringer's line of fire, leaving him behind her pinned down by Reaper ground forces. "Well, hell, Shepard. You were always ugly. I'll just slap some face paint on it and no one will ever notice."

Fin

_A/N: Originally published in the ME3 section of Mass Kink, link found here: __.?thread=7463294#t7463294_

_The sequel is Vis Insita._


	2. Vis Insita

**Vis Insita**

Shepard was (reluctantly) released on a sunny July morning along with a metric ton of monitoring equipment, two clucking hens cleverly disguised as nurses, one entirely new limb, and a grim expression of determination that said she was going to lose all but one of those in the next half hour or something was going to _explode_.

Fixed she might have been, but as Mordin had once said, "species aggression unchecked". Garrus had never been so glad to see Shepard in a murderous rage in all his life.

"Garrus, you had better have an exit strategy because if I have to put up with one more needle being poked at me, someone _else_ is going to have to regrow a limb for once." She growled in his ear as he scooped her up off her feet and into a rib-cracking hug. She hugged back just as tight. "Thank you for coming to get me." She added so softly that only he could hear it.

"Always." He murmured into her hair. "Every single time." He let her back down (not because he wanted to, but because his back was starting to complain), but didn't let go. "You ready to blow this joint?"

"_Yes_." Was her heartfelt reply. "Possibly literally. Where are we bunking?"

"The Normandy is in port." Garrus told her, glad that he didn't have to take her back to the half-wrecked apartment he'd been squatting in for the past month in-between rotations on the clean-up squads and his duties as Primus Victus's representative on Earth. That was all behind him though. The former had been strictly volunteer work and the other he'd cheerfully handed off to a newly arrived diplomat who'd been under the mistaken impression that he was there to act as Garrus's assistant. _Hah_. "Strangely enough, people just assume that of course I'm bunking in your quarters."

"Had better be, Vakarian." Her eyes flicked towards the nurses, who were trying to pretend like they weren't there and doing an abysmal job of it. "Seriously, get me out of here."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Garrus said and reached into his kit for a smoke grenade.

000

"Dear god, the fish survived." Was the first thing she said upon their arrival in the loft.

The Normandy was in dry dock on the pretext of awaiting orders, but really they'd been awaiting Shepard. Even missing three quarters of their fleet, the Alliance was visibly conflicted about assigning command of the Normandy to anyone else but her one true master. Whether it was superstition or the fact that there were damn few Captains on the ground comfortable with working so close with something like EDI, no one would say. Perhaps it was a bit of both, but it worked out in favor of the Normandy crew. As far as work assignments went, they were untouchable.

The Commander's release hadn't been widely televised and if Admiral Hackett hadn't requested that Garrus keep mum as a special favor then he mind had tried to organize a welcoming party or something. As it was, he was glad that he hadn't. All of a sudden he wasn't in much of a mood to share.

"Yeah, the VI you installed into the fishtank's hardware kept working even after the crash." Garrus turned slightly to watch the odd mix of Illium sunfish, Thessian jellyfish, and Earth koi drifting about inside the tank. "Honestly, it's a good thing you thought of that. It was weeks before anyone thought to come up here. Otherwise, the only thing left would have been that Batarian snapping eel."

Shepard squinted her eyes and cocked her head. She turned towards him with one brow raised high. "Speaking of the snapping eel, I don't see it in there."

"Oh, yeah… I caught it eating the other fish even after meals so I fed it to Urz."

"Wow, even the ornamental fish in Batarian space…" Shepard shook her head. "So, uh, I guess we've got some catching up to do."

"You could call it that." There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her; anecdotes from working with the Primarch, that dumb-ass stunt the engineers had pulled trying to reestablish power to Whitechapel, anything really… but the words dried up on his tongue. "Shepard… I almost lost you. If you hadn't…"

"Garrus." Her hand cupped his scarred mandible and he leaned into the touch instinctively. It had taken her touch to make him like his scars and he hadn't even realized how much he missed the contact until she'd touched him again after escaping Earth that first time. "… I couldn't die up there. I had orders…" She smiled. It was a quick little thing, different from the one she got right before something died messily or exploded. It was a private smile; one he was pretty sure was just for him. "… orders from my boyfriend."

"Heh." Garrus tried to remember the last time he'd laughed, but came up with a big blank until pretty much that awful rusty painful thing he'd managed in Shepard's bunker. This one felt a bit better, like a scab coming off an old wound. "So we're still on?"

"We are definitely still on." Shepard stepped into his arms and leaned into him. "Provided that comm unit over there doesn't go off before we can escape, I'm thinking your plan of somewhere warm and tropical is go. Not sure there will be vids or royalties for a while. I vote we start a pyjak ranch in the meantime."

"Pyjaks, huh?" Garrus started to construct a horrible pun about Turian/Human hybrid children but the terminal on Shepard's desk started to blink urgently, as though prodded into activity by Shepard's words. Oh well, it was probably for the best and the joke would keep.

'_Shepard? I got news that you've been released and have returned to the Normandy. If you're up to it, one of our engineering squads has gone dark. They were last seen near the Yahg homeworld_.'

"Are you kidding me?" Shepard groaned as Admiral Hackett's voice filtered in from the terminal, which had apparently lost its 'call-waiting' function. "It hasn't even been a year yet!" Even so, a light had appeared in her eyes that had been missing up until that moment. It was then that Garrus knew that they were never going to retire to that little stretch of beach, not for long at any given time anyway.

'… _and you know what?_' He realized with a rush of energy. '_I'm OK with that_.'

"Oh, answer the man." He rumbled, barely concealing his amusement. "You've got a new fist to test drive. Might as well let its maiden flight be right into a Yahg's face."

Shepard gave him a sour look. "You're lucky, buddy, that I'm not saving it for you." … but her words were belied by a smile (that _other_smile) that told him that the Yahg wouldn't know what hit them.

-fin

_A/N: Originally published in the ME3 section of Mass Kink, link found here: .?thread=7485566#t7485566_

_The sequel to No Perfect Fix._


End file.
